Day: November 19, 2013

I remember just a few years back when my book tours were very different. They usually began with a national NPR interview – Fresh Air, Diane Rehm – which catapulted the book to the top of the bestseller lists and that kicked of a two or three week national book tour – Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, Dayton or Columbus Ohio. In each city, there would be newspaper features and TV interview leading up to and promoting big evening readings at great bookstores with huge crowds, long lines of book signings.

Newspapers don’t review books much anymore, many of those bookstores are gone, and Fresh Air’s guest today was Anjelica Houston. Books have been pushed farther to the perimeter of our culture, even as more people are reading them all the time. The new writer has to go where his readers are, and they are online. This is not a lament, it is an opportunity. I make my own news for my book. The world changes, I will change with it.  But I had a good and interesting day. I was interviewed by Connie Brooks of Battenkill Books on Book Talk Nation a new book innovation between bookstores and the Author’s Guild. More online reviews – good ones, and some not so good. This is not a corporate blog, you get the good and the bad here.

I changed my idea of a book tour this year,  to accept the reality of the new publishing world – even NPR shows mostly interview movie and TV stars and there are fewer bookstores and even fewer book reviewers. I decided to ask Random House to let me use my blog and Facebook and other new media technologies to construct my own book tour. My agent supported this move, and so did Random House. They are helping me with social media promotions and publicity – otherwise, I am on my own.  I have lunch at the Round House cafe, not four-star restaurants, and it feels good, it feels like me.

No limos, room service, luxury hotels, media escorts. I do miss the great Thai restaurants and seafood.  I realized today that I was so busy giving stuff away – free dog food, free books, photos, Maria’s potholders – that I had really  talked very little about the book itself, and I don’t want the meaning of the book to get lost in all of the self-driven digital touring that I’m doing. Connie Brooks has shipped more than 700 books, a couple of hundred more are arriving this week, I am determined to get to 1,000 books sold at Battenkill Books and beyond. (You can call the store at 518 677-2515.) We are doing some innovative stuff on my Facebook page – real-time reviews, video and image story-sharing. And it is working, the book is in a second printing, people seem to be loving it in a very exciting way. I hope for a third printing before Christmas.

But I want to talk about the themes in the book this week on the new book tour, not just ways to buy it or inducements to sell it. The theme is resonating with the first wave of readers, I am hearing from them in great numbers. Our media and political culture gives us too little reason to be hopeful about our work, our love, our lives. Aging is mostly portrayed as a horrifically expensive medical entitlement. We do not see images of encouragement anywhere in our culture, and this is both discouraging and disturbing. Love, like death, is rarely discussed or represented in what is called the news.

In a way, my life with Maria is about second chances – for me, for her, for Frieda. It is also about having faith and finding love. You’ve all seen photos me, if I, at age 61, could find someone like Maria right across the street from me in a remote town with more cows that people, then anyone can find love anywhere. You just have to be open to it, and I had a loveless life before I opened to love, and when I was ready, it was right under my nose. This is not to say finding it is simple or easy, but you will never in your life see a story on the corporate news about older people who find love, there are too many people getting shot, too many houses burning down, too many politicians arguing and posturing.

I vowed to myself that I would not again lead a loveless life, that is a promise I will keep. As Frieda, Maria and I move into our lives together, I am so happy to relay a story with a happy ending. We are all living our lives in love and meaning, we got where we wanted to be. That is the message of “Second Chance Dogs.” Yes, I hope everyone buys it, sure I want to sell a lot of books,, but I am much closer to the end of my life than the beginning, and more than anything I want to touch people’s  hearts and show them the light and color and love that exists in the world. That is what “Second Chance Dog: A Love Story”  is about, and I need to make sure that message does not get lost in my determination to make the radical transition to the new life of the writer and the reader.

My friend George Forss became world famous through his brilliant images and landscapesof New York City before the attack on 9/11. Shortly after those attacks, he moved upstate – so much of his work included images of the Twin Towers, the digital revolution erupted and photography changed.Last week, George returned to Jersey City to find the vantage point he used for some of his most famous photos – he was on the Today Show, profiled in Time, visited by the greatest photographers in the world, eager to understand his use of light and exposure to capture the power and scope of New York City.

George’s work has never been equaled and he has not remained in the fickle public eye, although most photographers know his name. I was stunned to discover him living in Cambridge and we have become close and fast friends, he is a mentor and tutor as well as a friend. He has his own blog now and he pursues his writing, art gallery, interest in extra-terrestrial life,  and of course, he takes pictures all of the time. he is a genius and a sweet human being (he will be at our Open Houses at Bedlam Farm in 2014 doing portraits of people).

George was shocked to see how much the Jersey City landscape has changed, there is a Hyatt Hotel right on the spot where he took one of his most famous photographs, a study of his partner Donna Wyndbrandt walking on the Jersey City Boardwalk, the World Trade Center Towers in the background. George found the new World Trade Center tower – formerly called the “Freedom Tower” and he saw the last rays of the sun hitting the tower glass, and got another of his trademark wide-angle and sweeping images of New York. There are efforts underway to publish George’s photographs in a book, I hope they are successful, I have not yet been able to find a publisher who will commission a book on George, publishing has changed so much.

The world is ready for George’s breathtaking images of New York, they speak of another time in our country’s history, a time before so much fear, warning and anger – many historians are already tracing the Tea Party’s unrelenting xenophobia and rage to the aftershocks of 9/11 – George’s grand photographs reveal his sweeping mind and the ethos of another time. They also speak very much to his great vision of the world, undimmed or diminished by time, age and the ups and downs of the art world and public taste.  I’m going to try and buy a print of this photo and place it against one of his masterpieces that I bartered for a digital camera.

George plans to sell this image.

How poignant and powerful to see George return to the scene of his greatest works, and almost casually create another one. I am so lucky to know this remarkable human being.

I guess you could call Ma a rescue, she lived in hard times in a very confined space before our friend Eadon Ryan got her, and when she came to us, she was still a bit of a mess, her coat had felted, she had huge dreadlocks. Ma is a big sheep and she is dumb as a telephone pole. She and Red tangled for weeks – he would hang off of her long matted coat while she dragged him all over the pasture, but he dog-broke her and she behaves now. Ma is a hearty eater and can knock me down in a flash just by bumping into me, she provides Maria with a lot of wool and she is a genial sort of animal.

Nobody eats like Ma, surely not the other sheep, she burrows her head deep down into the feeder and comes up with a head full of hay. We are getting our ram in the next couple of weeks and if Ma gets knocked up, Maria will have a lot more yarn to sell.

I knew Maria was different from the moment I first saw her – she didn’t dress like anyone I had ever seen in upstate New York, flowing shirts, leggings, beads, brightly-colored tights. And then, she was not like the other people in many other ways. But I wasn’t exactly ordinary either, so this seemed normal to me, living up on my remote farm. Over time – we have been married three-and-a-half years, I began to notice some things about my wife that were  unusual, ethereal. I suspected I had married a spirit being..

Maria talked to animals, she and the donkeys have chats with one another each morning, they seem to share the news of their lives like women in those old photos from beauty parlors, she speaks to the cats and sheep, they flock to her, surround her, listen to her. She has a spirit/warrior dog, Frieda, who watches over her day and night. She has a relationship with bugs, she catches them in her hands, re-homes them, spiders are drawn to her, she relates very much to them and will not see them harmed. She finds crystals on the path that no one else can find, strange configurations of stones and flowers appear on windowsills, but I never see them being put there or taken down. Strange cats seek her out and rub against her, I hear her talking to her animals friends throughout the day, she has mystical and endless dreams with many twists and turns, and many of them re-appear as the mystical visions and fables in her potholders, streaming pieces and quilts.

She floats through the garden like a wraith, bending down over the flowers, plucking weeds, planting and re-planting, encouraging and nourishing, they bloom before her, thrive in her care.

If you saw her work, you would know she is a spirit creature of some kind, she stands and looks at piles of fabrics, old dresses and towels, faded shirts and hankies, and in her mind, she transforms this potpourri into visions, complex patterns and colors and designs, she sees where every disparate piece is a part of the whole, her hands fly across the fabric and sewing machine as if they are possessed, which they are.  While she works, she dances and sings, her Studio Barn trembles with creation. It is wizardly.

Although she does not love technology, she has begun texting on her Iphone, but I suspect she may be texting her spirit friends, I hear her laughing and cackling sometimes and speaking in tongues. She has the most powerful smile, I have seen it peel wallpaper off of walls, pierce angry and cold hearts.

Maria is a forest creature, she is at  home in the deep woods, exclaiming over the light, the shadows, the rocks and twig formations that I do not usually see. She is barefoot half of the year, she wears long and winding shawls, covers her face with brightly-colored hoodies. There is no other human like her. She sees through things, on to the other side. Sometimes she is too much for me, I am all too mortal. So I began to wonder, is my wife a witch? An angel? A fairy?, sent down to the earth to transform the life of a lost human? How does one live with an ethereal creature and what exactly is she, anyway. She won’t say. She just smiles when I ask her. I can’t tell you, she says, she just smiles mysteriously at me. This is significant, I don’t think the minister knew, although when we married I did see the barn swallows carrying wreaths and dancing in the rafters.

I think Maria is not a witch, witches – good and bad – have magical powers, they practice magic for religious, spiritual or medicinal purposes. That doesn’t sound like Maria, if she were a witch, she would just wash my socks once in awhile by snapping her fingers or chanting. The socks things prove she is mortal, or mostly mortal. And she is not an angel, either, she does not have wings on her back  (that have revealed themselves), nor does she have a halo on her head, and she is associated with no particular religion or brand of spirituality (does being a pagan count? – I’ve dismissed that too.)

After extensive thought, research and observation, I have decided my wife is a fairy. Wickipedia says a fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature in mostly European folklore, a form of spirit. Fairies resemble various beings, they are small, slight, agile – they are sometimes call wee folk, good folk, people of peace, fair folk. Maria is all of those things, she is barely more than a midget, skinny as a preying mantis and is fair and peaceful. She is, I have to say, Sicilian in part, and sometimes that does mitigate or overwhelm the wee and quiet folk idea.

She can make a lot of noise when she is angered, and I’m not sure pure fairies do that. Fairies are generally described as being human in appearance and having some magical powers – this makes sense, when I see the images of fairies (I looked online) they looked like Maria, dressed like nature’s hippies, flowing dresses and robes and hoods, touching plants and flowers, necklaces and flowers, adored with plants, nourishing flowers and gardens, dancing with animal (I have seen Maria dance with the dogs and donkeys.)

It is not simple, in addition to witches and fairies, there are pixies, sprints, elves and leprechauns. Maria has elements of some of these creatures, but none of them really fit. The process of elimination works. My research shows that fairies need love and creativity, they must be surrounded by nature, they wither and die in the face of anger, coldness and too much dark. I’m up to it.

So I am getting somewhere. I suppose I feel a bit like the hapless husband in “I Dream Of Jeannie,” a sitcom from the distant past in which Larry Hagman plays a clueless husband trying to deal with a wife who disappears and appears at will – Maria does this, she will be sitting in one room, then suddenly be in another, I never see her actually move, it is as if she goes through the walls. Once or twice I have gone outside to find her sitting up in the barn lofts, or climbing the apple tree to visit the barn cats.

Life with a fairy is different from other kinds of life and marriage. I am lucky to be living with a fairy.